climate change
edyong | April 23, 2008In the story of climate change, humans and the carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere are the villains of the piece. Now, it seems that we have an accomplice and a most unexpected one at that. It lives in the pine forests of North America and even though it measures just 5 millimetres in length, it is turning these woods from carbon sinks into carbon sources. It's the mountain pine beetle.
The beetle bores into pine trees and feeds from nutrient-carrying vessels called phloem. It also lays its eggs there. Once a beetle has colonised a pine, it pumps out pheromones that attract others,…
revere | April 8, 2008We can argue about the cause, but climate is changing. It may be called global warming but the effect most people will see is an increased variability of weather events, with more frequent extreme weather. Little things. Like Hurricane Katrina. WHO is among many warning that it is not only the physical effects that will affect people, but changes in disease patterns as well, with the brunt of climate change linked disease deaths coming from the Asia-Pacific region:
Shigeru Omi, WHO director for the Western Pacific region based in Manila, said "the impact of climate change will be felt more in…
edyong | April 2, 2008Did our ancestors exterminate the woolly mammoth? Well, sort of. According to a new study, humans only delivered a killing blow to a species that had already been driven to the brink of extinction by changing climates. Corralled into a tiny range by habitat loss, the diminished mammoth population became particularly vulnerable to the spears of hunters. We just kicked them while they were down.
The woolly mammoth first walked the earth about 300,000 years ago during the Pleistocene period. They were well adapted to survive in the dry and cold habitat known as the 'steppe-tundra'. Despite the…
edyong | March 25, 2008We've all seen the images of receding glaciers and stranded polar bears that accompany talks of climate change. But rising carbon dioxide levels also have subtler and less familiar effects, and may prove to be a boon for many animal groups. Plant-eating insects, for example, have much to gain in a high -CO2 future as rising concentrations of the gas can compromise the defences of the plants they feed on.
Plants and herbivorous insects are engaged in a silent war that we are rarely privy too, where chemicals act as both weapons and messengers. Munching mandibles trigger the production of…
grrlscientist | February 15, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, climate change, global warming, oceanic dead zones, west coast, North America, Oregon state, Washington state
Millions of dead crabs are washing up onto Oregon and Washington state beaches from the offshore "dead zone".
Ever since it was first noticed by crab fishermen who hauled up hundreds of dead and dying crabs in 2002, the "dead zone" that popped up in the waters along the northwestern coastal shelf just off the coast of Oregon has claimed unknown millions of lives. This oxygen-depleted region has transformed formerly rich seafloor communities teeming with…
grrlscientist | February 4, 2008tags: global warming, LabLit, science fiction, book review
I read the first two books in this trilogy last year [book 1 and book 2] and ever since I finished them, I had wondered; and then what happened? Well, now I know the answer to this question, and I can honestly say that this, the third of three books, made the entire trilogy into a huge disappointment, even though the series started out by showing some promise. Sixty Days And Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson (NYC: Bantam Books; 2007) is the last installment in a eco-political near-future sci-fi thriller trilogy. This particular book's…
revere | January 28, 2008Geoerge Bush doesn't want government involved in climate change. Best done by voluntary measures, he says. Volunteers anyone? Guess not:
Global warming ranks far down the concerns of the world's biggest companies, despite world leaders' hopes that they will pioneer solutions to the impending climate crisis, a startling survey will reveal this week.
Nearly nine in 10 of them do not rate it as a priority, says the study, which canvassed more than 500 big businesses in Britain, the US, Germany, Japan, India and China. Nearly twice as many see climate change as imposing costs on their business as…
revere | January 22, 2008Recently we posted on the EPA highly unusual (as in unprecedented) decision to reject Californian's new greenhouse gas regulations. Why did they do it? Good question and one the California Congressional delegation wanted an answer to. To whom did EPA talk about the regulations? Who advised them to reject it? Sorry. Mum's the word. Actually its words. Executive privilege:
Invoking executive privilege, the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday refused to provide lawmakers with a full explanation of why it rejected California's greenhouse gas regulations.
The EPA informed Sen. Barbara Boxer…
ddobbs | January 15, 2008A new journal from the Nature Publishing Group (publishers of Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and other favorites of mine) has just started a journal about climate change, and to my delight they feature a story about climate change and Atlantic cod, an old love of mine from my time on the Gulf of Maine.
Atlantic cod, Gadus callarius Linneaus, by Goode, from the magnificent Bigelow and Schroeder, Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, 1953, the best field guide I've ever read, now online.
Cod aren't doing terribly well, because of overfishing and decimation of inshore spawning stocks, though some pockets…
revere | January 2, 2008The 60s radical group, the Weathermen, took their name from a Bob Dylan song, Subterranean Homesick Blues: s' "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Now we have the converse. You don't need to break wind to know this weatherman blows. On his blog, Chris Allen, the TV weatherman from WBKO, Bowling Green, Kentucky, explains to us why he doesn't believe that humans are responsible for climate change. He is quick to say that just because he doesn't have a "Dr." in front of his name is no reason we shouldn't take his arguments seriously. We agree. This is why we shouldn't…
revere | October 24, 2007CDC Director Julie Gerberding's draft testimony to be presented before a Senate committee was "eviscerated" by the Office of Management and Budget according to an AP story by Josef Hebert (hat tip MF). The missing pieces related to the potential health impacts of climate change:
Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance.
"It was eviscerated," said a CDC official, familiar with…
revere | September 21, 2007I post occasionally on climate change here but other SBers do it much better (e.g., Chris Mooney at The Intersection). When I have posted on it I have neglected to mention the amount of money I make from the climate change issue. The subject just "didn't come up." Well now it has, so honesty requires me to disclose that I make $0 from my position on climate change. I mention it now because Patrick Michaels, one of the news media's favorite climate change deniers (no relation to my friend David Michaels from The Pump Handle), has withdrawn as an expert witness in a court case rather than…
revere | August 31, 2007Because swatting the climate change denier gnats is an endless task, we are glad to help our SciBling John Lynch provide the swatter for yet another boring attempt to breach the walls of scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. In 2004 Naomi Orestes, a fine historian of science known personnally to a number of us, published a survey in Science establishing that consensus. It has been a target of the climate change contrarians ever since. The latest entry in the "it's wrong even if almost all scientists think it's true" sweepstakes comes in the journal Energy and Environment (aka…
revere | August 14, 2007There may still be some who see the multiply disgraced Paul Wolfowitz as an intellectually hardnosed neoconservative who called them as he saw them (despite being egregiously wrong and morally bankrupt in how he saw them), but the more we see of the real person who obtained a lucrative sinecure and inappropriate pay raises for his girlfriend when he was head of the World Bank, the more he looks like any other unprincipled political hack. Take this bit of water carrying for the Bush administration on climate change:
The Bush administration has consistently thwarted efforts by the World Bank to…
revere | July 27, 2007One of the gross abuses that triggered the Reformation was the corrupt practice of Catholic priests of selling "indulgences," get-out-of-jail free cards for your sins in this world. Since the Bush administration is always willing to learn from history where corruption is the prize, they have come up with a new idea to sell climate change indulgences to a public increasingly worried about how today's sins will punish their grandchildren. This latest Bush administration proposal for offsetting the build-up of greenhouse gases characteristically (for them) doesn't operate on the source side --…
grrlscientist | June 15, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate change, ornithology, birds, avian biodiversity, habitat destruction
White-crested hornbill, Tropicranus albocristatus, also confined to African rainforests, may see more than half of its geographic range lost by 2100.
Image: Walter Jetz, UCSD. [larger]
Thanks to the combined effects of global warming and habitat destruction, bird populations will experience significant declines and extinctions over the next century, according to a study conducted by ecologists at the University of California, San Diego and Princeton University. This…
ddobbs | June 1, 2007
Don't count on the tropical forest gobbling up our excess carbon. Such is the warning from a recent study by Harvard's Kenneth Feeley and others in Ecology Letters, which suggests that we may not be able to count on surging tropical forest growth to slow global warming by consuming some of the excess carbon (via carbon dioxide intake). Why not? Because warming temperatures, contrary to previous thought and hope, were found to actually slow tropical forest growth in this 25-year study in Panama and Malaysia. As Feeley notes in the article's abstract, "these patterns strongly contradict the…
sporte | December 21, 2006Yes, indeed the DVDs are now available on a first-come, first serve basis.
The NSTA has a link to the DVD giveaway page. And the NABT (National Association of Biology Teachers) has written about it, too.
From the NABT:
The DVD's will be given away starting Monday, December 18, 2006 thru Thursday, January 18, 2007. Teachers are encouraged to log on to www.participate.net to request the DVD, which will be delivered within 6-8 weeks. Every teacher must provide a nine-digit federal tax ID number belonging to the school where they teach.
A free downloadable curriculum guide to accompany An…
sporte | November 30, 2006Some of my fellow bloggers and I have been following the fall out from an Op Ed piece in the Washington Post on the NSTA's refusal to mail 50,000 copies of the "An Inconvient Truth" DVD to it's members. You can read earlier posts: here, here, and here.
Today, the NSTA confirmed that they never said David couldn't provide the film free to NSTA members, it's just that they don't mail out third party materials to members without their consent or request.
From the NSTA pressroom:
On November 29, 2006, NSTA's Board of Directors held a telephone conference to review Ms. David's request. In an…
sporte | September 22, 2006As they say, there's nothing like travel to learn new and unexpected things.
Especially from cab drivers.
One of my ScienceBlog Sibs, Shelly, spends time talking with cabbies about earwax, but I seem to invite other kinds of lectures.
Often times, my driver are Sikhs. So perhaps you can guess the topics.
Can I have Indian religious holidays, for twenty, Alex?
And other times I learn about the challenges of adapting to life in the U.S.
But not yesterday.
After a short plane hop over the mountains, I got to listen to a cab time lecture on clean energy. We were having a nice chat…